tales of work, unemployment and those activities in between

Getting Over My Phone Phobia

My phobia about using the phone to call strangers is legendary, extreme and totally unproductive. I basically just beat myself up, and end up making the calls and hating everything about the calls and myself the whole time.

But today, when I was assigned these calls, I decided to take a better attitude. This is possible because the calls were fun, good news type of calls, as opposed to solicitations or cold calls. I got to offer people tickets to a benefit party for free. Super fun. There was one woman who had been displaced by Hurricane Sandy, and she even thanked me for inviting her and was so gracious and kind, despite having lost her home.

It makes me think about was a positive tool the phone can be. I have always treated it as the communication tool of last resort–I would rather send emails (so that we have a record of our back and forth) or have a meeting in person. But if you have good news to share, a phone call is always great. And it is important to call and share good news and well as to call and nag someone if something is late, or wrong. I think in my old job, I was doing so much project management that the phone was only used as a tool of calling someone to explain all the things they were doing wrong. But I know that in a lot of situations people really do ignore email, and

Anyway, through my temping-induced exposure therapy, I am slowly being cured of my phone phobia! Hurrah. Also, I made all my calls before lunch, so lunch feels like a